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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

I think the stardates were originally supposed to be a combination of the date on earth, and your distance in light years away from it.
 
Ensign Lance: "I need to feel the light on my skin."
Ortegas: "Whatever tweaks your freak, pal."
<note: that's it - no joke, that is the actual dialogue, from a starfleet officer, in the 23rd century, from a superior officer to a junior officer. I'm not joking - I can't think of anything to parody this with.>

La'An: "Genetic engineering... using Illyrian medical tech against Federation regs?"

Number One: "Thanks to the Eugenics Wars. I guess you know all about that period in history."

La'An: "You don't grow up with a bioengineered mass murderer as a ancestor and not develop a thick skin. The kids would tease."

Number One: "Why didn't you change your name?"

La'An: "What?"

Number One: "One shouldn't be judged on a person's genetics, but your family could have easily just changed their name. I mean, not even change, just dropped the Noonien part. Singh is a extremely common name."

La'An: "True..."

Number One: "I mean, I'm sure relatives of people like Hitler or Stalin probably changed their name."

La'An: "Ya but it's my family name..."

Number One: "I mean, anyone in your family line could have taken their mother's family name at some point. People have been doing that since forever. Break patriachial traditions, you know kill two birds with one stone."

La'An: "Ya, but then no one would have known that I was related to Khan Noonien Singh and would not have been bullied..."

Dr M'benga: "We can't use your blood to make a cure."

Number One: "Are you going to state me Starfleet regs against genetic modification..."

Nurse Chapel: "Oh no, I don't care about the regs. In fact, I love genetic engineering. I mean, I did temporarily change the DNA of the landing party 2 weeks ago like it was nothing. Next to inflicting pain, I love genetic engineering!"

La'An: "So because of my family name the kids use to call me a augment and a monster..."

Number One: "Wait a minute, we already heard your tragic back story."

La'An: "Yeah, but it keeps getting more tragic."

Number One: "No, we need a new one. And it's that I am a secret Illyrian. Yup, I am actually an augment and have had to hide it all this time. Tragic isn't it?"

Dr. M'benga: "Not tragic enough. I on the other hand have a much more tragic secret and back story. I've been hiding my terminally ill young daughter in the emergency medical transporter's buffer because she only has a year to live."

Number One: "Ok, you win this round doctor. We'll see who has a new tragic back story next week."

Number One: "I've committed a Federation offense. I'm resigning my commision and surrendering myself for disciplinary review."

Pike: "Rejected."

Number One: "But I lied to get into Starfleet."

Pike: "Who cares, you are a damn good officer and you are here now."

Number One: "I also lied to the Doctor when I got infected to hid my secret. If I hadn't the doctor could have found the cure at that time."

Pike: "Well, luckily they found a cure anyways and no one died so it's all ok."

Number One: "But if you shelter me they could come after..."

Pike: "I welcome it. They can't touch me. I've seen my future."

Number One: "But since La'An, Chapel and M'benga know my secret they could pay the price if Starfleet finds out that they knew also."

Pike: "Well, you let me worry about Starfleet..."

Number One: "And to continue this charade, all of us will have to falsify mission logs, medical logs, security logs..."

Pike: "Well, to make a omlet..."

Number One: "And think of the scandal if this gets out. An Illyrian serving as First Officer on the flagship of Federation and officers knew and covered it up. Even crewmembers that didn't know about my secret would carry the stigma of serving on the ship with a augment. Suspicion would follow them and affect their careers as people would wonder if they had any knowledge or were part of the cover up."

Pike: "Well, that's possible..."

Number One: "And I would have to go on, day in and day out lying. I would have to continue to lie on every medical form and examination. I would be lying while holding a top security clearance. I would have to serve knowing that I was lying to everyone while asking the crew to follow my commands and entrust their lives in my hands."

Pike: "Well, we all have our secrets."

Number One: "Sir?"

Pike: "Well, we can't talk about Discovery. I have secret knowledge of my death. Spock is not allowed to talk about his sister. The Doctor has something going on with his daughter. You got your lllyrian heritage. I mean, next to having a tragic back story, it's pretty much a requirement to have some sort of secret to serve on the Enterprise."


Number One: "So according to Hemmer's diagnostics you have been hiding something."

Dr M'benga: "Yes, I have been holding my daughters pattern in the emergency medical transporter because she is terminally ill and I am looking for a cure. Do you want to meet her?"

Number One: "Sure."

Dr. M'benga: "That's strange, her pattern should be right here in the emergancy medical transporter."

Number One: "Ya but didn't Captain Pike order all ship systems powered down except for life support last week when trying to fool the Shepherds?"

Dr M'benga: "Er..."

Number One: "Maybe you should have left her pattern in a transporter back at Starfleet Medical where she would have a team of doctors and engineers taking care of her and the transporter. There would be very little danger of a power or sytems failure. Also I'm sure medical research would be vastly more available and quicker than just you trying to find a cure while at the same time serving as chief medical officer of a starship."

Dr M'benga: "But then how could I read her a story every time I took her out of the transporter, shortening her remaining time and allowing her to suffer from the effects of her "brutal" disease."
Number One: "You have been hanging around Nurse Sadist Chapel too long."
 
The unabashed love this is getting is fascinating. I don't think it's bad by any means - it's competent and oft times good. It's a lot better than Disco or Picard, which isn't in and of itself a grand achievement.

But the storytelling is remarkably safe and familiar with a big-budget infusion - I guess that's the appeal?

If you were going by a 5-star rating system, I'd be happy to give this a 3 and a half out of 5 (half a point deducted for mentioning Spock's sister). 3 and a half is still solid, right? But holy balls, it's just wall-to-wall 10/10!!!! elsewhere. Battered wife syndrome, perhaps?

Yikes - I have never been this off-side before.
 
You may have hit on an important point: Maybe people don't want high art or heavy, deep intellectual stories. Maybe people just want to be entertained. Maybe people just want something at least as good as S3 TOS that is familiar and fun and has good production values. Or maybe there's just been so much bad 'Trek for so long that people will go bananas for even mediocre 'Trek.
 
MODMAN said:
The unabashed love this is getting is fascinating. I don't think it's bad by any means - it's competent and oft times good. It's a lot better than Disco or Picard, which isn't in and of itself a grand achievement.

But the storytelling is remarkably safe and familiar with a big-budget infusion - I guess that's the appeal?

If you were going by a 5-star rating system, I'd be happy to give this a 3 and a half out of 5 (half a point deducted for mentioning Spock's sister). 3 and a half is still solid, right? But holy balls, it's just wall-to-wall 10/10!!!! elsewhere. Battered wife syndrome, perhaps?

Yikes - I have never been this off-side before.
Click to expand...
Man I'm just happy to have episodic Star Trek that I can look forward to watching again, it's not perfect but it's really not that deep.
 
Like, people can have a positive emotional reaction to something without believing it's objectively a top quality thing.

If you haven't had fries in twenty years and someone puts a McNuggets value meal in front of you, you're going to have a fantastic time devouring it despite knowing it's not a three Michelin star meal.
 
Volpone said:
You may have hit on an important point: Maybe people don't want high art or heavy, deep intellectual stories. Maybe people just want to be entertained. Maybe people just want something at least as good as S3 TOS that is familiar and fun and has good production values. Or maybe there's just been so much bad 'Trek for so long that people will go bananas for even mediocre 'Trek.
Click to expand...

I don't want high art from Trek, nor have I ever perceived it as such. I do think DS9 at it's best was damned good by any measure.

They ran a "New Coke" campaign and everyone's thrilled to have Classic back on the shelf.

But yeah, I get it. It's comfort food. I guess the thing is, we've been spoilt by a lot of incredibly well-written shows in the years following ENT's cancellation. NuTrek tried to ape the prestige serialised format and failed miserably. So, back to tried and true it is.

Enjoy the McNuggets while they're still hot, I guess.
 
It's odd that my partner is enjoying it more than me. I'm the Trekkie, damnit.

I wish this had been the first new series instead of Disco.

I think I'm enjoying each episode much the same as everyone else - I'm just more subdued and cautious. The worst I've said about an episode is it was average.

It's still early days and this is clearly better than anything else has been out of the gate.
 
MODMAN said:
But yeah, I get it. It's comfort food. I guess the thing is, we've been spoilt by a lot of incredibly well-written shows in the years following ENT's cancellation. NuTrek tried to ape the prestige serialised format and failed miserably. So, back to tried and true it is.

Enjoy the McNuggets while they're still hot, I guess.
Click to expand...
Well, I think a thing is that we don't have a lot of incredibly well-written shows like this. Prestige TV is serialised and, because its conflicts have to be "important" enough to sustain entire seasons of shows, often pretty dark or depressing. But there's a huge appetite for episodic stuff out there - that's one of the reasons we're seeing a weird renaissance of Columbo fandom right now. And we just haven't seen a lot of great episodic TV outside comedy! The Orville is fine, but sub-Voyager level. There's still uh NCIS and Law & Order for boomers. But since the end of Enterprise, I don't know that there's been even Enterprise-level episodic scifi? The good sci-fi stuff, For All Mankind and The Expanse, they're heavily serialised. BSG was a mix of episodic and serialised, but its episodic stuff was rancid, it was no good at that at all. Maybe some people like the stargates idk.
 
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